Demon Theory

by Stephen Graham Jones

  ON a different floor, Vangelesti is at a nurse station where three halls come together. Begging: “C’mon … I don’t know how it got locked.” The sour-faced nurse who was the REGISTER NURSE in the original looks over her bifocals at him, stops unwrapping her sub sandwich.

  “She specifically said she didn’t want to be disturbed, though.”

  “But it’s me. Her fiancé?”

  “Oh, well, of course.”

  “Those doors aren’t even supposed to be locked, are they?”

  “She’s not officially admitted,” the nurse explains. “So policy doesn’t ‘officially’ apply.”

  “Maybe I’m worried about her, then? She’s not even answering the phone … ”

  “Phones are disturbances, right, Mr. Vangelesti?”

  Vangelesti shakes his head in disbelief. Looks at the keys on their hook.

  “I could just—”

  “When I’m through with lunch maybe,” the nurse says. “We can go disturb her together.”

  Vangelesti looks from her sandwich to her keys—within reach—and is looking, looking, obviously resisting temptation, when a light on the switchboard behind the nurse buzzes. She turns to it, then back to Vangelesti.

  “Like I’m his stewardess,” she says, about the patient calling.

  “It’s ‘flight attendant’ now,” Vangelesti corrects, then looks up the hall, whispers: “But I won’t tell anybody.”

  As he’s walking off to Cat’s room—same hall with the double doors at the end—the shot pans over the counter of the nurse station, the nurse carefully unwrapping her sandwich, the hook beside her naked, no keys.

  THEY’RE in the door of Cat’s room. Vangelesti standing in the doorway studying the unmade bed, upturned nightstand, the scattered pharmaceuticals. Hale’s mother’s room all over again. The association is hard to miss: Cat’s as gone as Hale’s mother was in the original.

  “Here kitty kitty … ” he says, sweeping his POV back and forth.

  The window is important here, curtains in motion.

  He goes to it, looks out, down at the dog lying motionless on its side in the alley, in what could be a pool of dried blood, or just an old stain from 1972.

  “What?” Vangelesti says to himself, then notices the bathroom door, Cat’s crutch peeking out at floor level.

  He smiles and the focus changes: distant in his f.g. are the keys, still in the door.

  He walks softly to the bathroom, evidently smelling something already, getting cautious. He pushes the door open with his foot, leans in, the music crescendoing, misleading: the bathroom is all white. Or mostly.

  Kneeling, Vangelesti finds the telltale blood, just enough for his fingertip.

  “Cat?” he says, trying to make sense of it all.

  He stands the crutch up and the bathroom door closes, the outer door slamming moments later, the guilty ceiling vent inserted.

  Vangelesti tries the knob, no luck, the keys outside jangling with his effort, no one there to hear them.

  AT the nurse station another light buzzes moments later. The nurse looks from it to the in-house phone, and places it slowly to her ear, listening with a patient grin, looking first to the empty key hook, then down the hall to Cat’s room.

  “Oh yes,” she says, “I’ll be there right away, Mr. Vangelesti,” and then leaves the phone off the hook, angled toward the sub sandwich she’s leaning down for, relishing all the more.

  “LET me get this straight,” Con says suddenly, his voice a frame ahead of him on-screen, Metatron looking right back at him. “Because I admittedly left a cigarette unattended—”

  “Lit,” Metatron clarifies.

  “—which I apologized for, remember. To start over. Because they needed me in ER and I had to drop everything and run—”

  “Meaning you didn’t have to answer for it,” Metatron interrupts, showcasing the ugly burn in the control panel.

  “Someone’s life was probably saved because I didn’t use up those vital seconds properly disposing of that cigarette.”

  “Not mine,” Metatron says, standing firm. “Near as I can tell you’re not smoking in here anymore.”

  “It’s not like it doesn’t already smell like a Pink Floyd concert200 or anything … ”

  “I’m responsible with mine. There’s a difference.”

  “Yeah. You’re armed.”

  Metatron shrugs, looks around on the control panel as if for any more burns. There are none; his point is made. Con slides his cigarette behind his ear.

  “And he calls himself a fellow smoker,” Con says to Rush, who’s bent to the video equipment, slowly advancing through the Jenny section of their tape.

  “I’m not taking sides here,” Rush says, fiddling.

  “Well what is it?” Con asks, looking at Jenny.

  Rush shrugs. “It’s like there’s something under the recording. At a different speed almost. Like when they record porn over porn201 and try to sell it to you as new.”

  “That’s just audio, though, usually,” Metatron says. “Right?”

  “Usually,” Rush says. “I don’t know.”

  “Are we going to record over it, then?” Con asks, leading.

  “Well we don’t want to psychologically traumatize my little brother,” Rush agrees. “I mean, any more than me dying’s going to.”

  Con leans over to eject the tape and Vangelesti’s nicotine gum slips out of his shirt pocket, a prize. He unwraps it, chews loudly, for Metatron.

  “Knock yourself out,” Metatron tells him, opening a drawer littered with free samples of nicotine gum, all the brands. Con unwraps a few, gets a serious big wad going.

  “You’re enabling me here, y’know,” Con says.

  “I’ll enable my foot right up your ass,” Metatron says back.

  Con plays scared, gives him his chair back, writes CHRISTMAS EVE on the Jenny tape—a reminder for us—before loading it into a different VCR, the one wired into the monitors. Then he turns to Metatron: “So what’s on the boob tube, you old lecher?” he asks, and Metatron looks at the two of them, as if deciding whether they’re worthy.

  Rush offers his argument: “I’ve only got so many rocks left to get off, y’know … ”

  Metatron shrugs, convinced enough, and keys in some complex combination that brings up the female locker room on an individual monitor, various nurses changing into elven costumes, enough second-hand skin to satisfy.

  “Ahhh … ye olde Christmas pageant,” Rush says, appreciatively.

  “Shower scene from Carrie,”202 Con adds, then fake-yells into the screen: “Plug it up, plug it up!”

  “Make room,” Rush says, trying to see more.

  Metatron leans back, casts a cursory eye on the wall of monitors. One is an angle on a hall, something blacking it out for a moment, just passing. Metatron smiles about this, confused. With the joystick he keys in a few monitors, all with some angle on the hall. In one of them is an OLD MAN having problems with his wheelchair. Clinging to the ceiling above him is the coma patient, yellow eyes turning slowly onto the security camera. Metatron doesn’t see this one, yet.

  Instead he raises his hand from the control panel, stringing nicotine gum up as high as his arm will go.

  Rush sees, elbows Con, who starts fake-chewing on cue. But Metatron isn’t fooled.

  His hand goes to his Taser, his eyes to the gum.

  “You’re not serious … ” Con pleads, but Metatron is: under duress, Con balls the gum up, puts it back in his mouth. “It was making me shake,” he says, no pity there for him. “Like I need another addiction—” he starts to add, but then his POV locks onto the monitor behind Metatron, the patient skittering around a corner. On the ceiling. “What the hell …?” he says, all of them turning to the monitor.

  Metatron chases the coma patient with the joystick, multiple cameras, never really seeing him all at once. Finally a security camera gets crashed to the ground for looking where it shouldn’t, it would seem.

  “What is
it?” Con says.

  “Another video glitch,” Metatron says. “Probably nothing.”

  “A fast nothing,” Rush adds.

  “Was it seeing us …?” Con says, no answer.

  “We need to recover that camera,” Metatron says, slipping into his security jacket.

  “‘We?’” Con asks.

  “I may cut my finger on the broken glass of the lens,” Metatron says slowly, buzzing the door open, “need some of your expert medical assistance.” He herds Con and Rush toward the door, Con maneuvering all around so he’s the last one out, the one to pull the door shut, his wad of gum shoved into the mouth of the lock, so the tongue won’t come out. So the door will just look closed.

  Rush nods to Con, and Con acknowledges in passing, is more aware of the ceiling than before. Walking less tall.203

  “Goddamn you, Virginia,” he says to himself.

  DOWN whatever hall was on the monitor the same old man is still having wheelchair problems.

  “Give me an acre I’ll turn this damn thing around,” he says to no one in particular, pushing the wheels first this wrong way, then that, no coordination.

  The shot backs off some and directly above him the yellow-eyed coma patient is back, bellied up to the ceiling, the ceiling match-cut to the one passing over Markum as he strolls through the ER, trying to look busy. The match-cut suggesting that the coma patient could be on any ceiling—anywhere. An effective device.

  Markum, strolling, isn’t looking behind any of the curtains either, which is his downfall: an arm stabs out from behind one, pulls him in. Nona the owner of that arm. Against the wall behind her is Hale, on his bed, midsection bloody under the sheet. Still comatose, though.

  Nona pulls Markum close to her face.

  “Fix him,” she says.

  Markum scans Hale’s still-attached clipboard, laughs. “They warn us about these kind of situations,” he says, “our insurance department, I mean. But there’s usually a cop204 and his K9 unit involved … ”

  Nona advances on him, boxcutter at his neck in a flash. “He’s not a dog, Trapper John.”

  Markum gets a tad more concerned: “So this … John Doe. He’s already [reading] admitted … a patient?”

  “Does it matter? He’s dying. Don’t you have an oath or some shit?”

  Markum steers clear of Nona’s boxcutter, folds the sheet down, off Hale. Just playing along. But then the mess Hale is gets inserted. “What the hell happ—?” he starts, Nona already interrupting: “You don’t want to know.” Markum studies her, her response. She continues: “I don’t even want to know.”

  “This is because I told Watkins—”

  “He better not die. Or plan on having to heal yourself.”205

  “I need to know the nature of the injury, then. Please? At least that.”

  Nona stares him down, tells him—“Bite wound”—and after a long inner debate he finally rolls some latex onto his hands, gathers the minimum equipment, digs in reluctantly.

  “Guess we’ll forego the anesthetic,” he says, Hale not even beginning to respond to the cold steel probing his insides.

  In his f.g. Nona is watching every possible entrance into their curtain room, and there are way too many to see all at once.

  AS Metatron rounds a corner, all business, Con looks back to Rush, saying now with his eyes. On some prearranged cue, Rush stumbles, gurgles, holds himself up with the handrail.

  Metatron looks back. Con leans down to pretend to give aid.

  “Go on,” Rush just manages to say, “go. Just need to cough it out.”

  “You okay?” Metatron asks, half-hesitant, all earnest, but Rush just waves him on.

  “We were probably walking too fast,” Con explains.

  “Do I need to call someone?” Metatron asks, palming the radio snaked up the shoulder of his jacket.

  “I am someone,” Con interjects, tugging on his ID badge. “And he’ll be okay.” [turning to Rush:] “It’s the green eggs, right?”

  Rush just manages to get a nod across without cracking up.

  Metatron stands over them deciding, deciding, then finally nods bye and turns to leave, Con still in tow.

  We stay with Rush for a moment. In the doorway across from him is the nurse from Oncology, dinner under her arm. She claps ponderously for Rush’s performance. Rush smiles, caught, standing into another floor-sweeping hat-bow, and then we’re moving with Metatron and Con, Con already doing his best Eddie Haskell206: “I think he was faking it, really,” he’s saying confidentially. “I mean chemo makes you sick and all, but he tends to get sick at some pretty damn convenient times … ”

  Metatron looks back at him with reproach, and they push on.

  “WHAT do you mean he’s not in there?” Vangelesti asks Dr. Watkins’s SECRETARY. “He is on call, correct?”

  The secretary nods. “He locks his door when he leaves,” she explains.

  “Yeah,” Vangelesti says back, picking up the receiver of her phone. “What’s his pager number?”

  “555-0971.”

  Vangelesti punches it in, and for a v.o. message-request stabs in 666.207 Not fifteen seconds later, Dr. Watkins’s beeper goes off behind his door. Vangelesti smiles. The secretary accepts his challenge, doesn’t look away.

  “Excuse me,” Vangelesti tells her, positioning her intercom so he can talk into it: “Dr. Watkins,” he says. “So sorry to have to page you. But there’s a situation.”

  Beat, beat, then the falsely confident reply: “I am busy, here, mister … ” the intercom crackling for a name.

  “Vangelesti,” Vangelesti fills in. “That paramedic who got hit in the street on Halloween?” he continues. “She’s disappeared. That’s the situation.”

  The intercom clicks on, but there’s no voice, just static.

  “Is that all?” the nurse asks. “Your girlfriend left and you want the director to take care of … your love life, now?”

  “She’s more than just my girlfriend,” Vangelesti says, then explains into the intercom: “I found blood in her room. And it was locked from the inside. I think she was scared of something.”

  “What?” Dr. Watkins asks, too defensively, and like that we’re on the other side of the door, Dr. Watkins waiting for a response from the intercom he has dragged to his place on the floor, where’s he’s evidently been trying to humpty-dumpty208 his organ-man back together again, with little luck.

  “I don’t know,” Vangelesti says through the intercom. “That’s why we need to call somebody.”

  Dr. Watkins shakes his head no. “Has the situation in the coma unit been resolved yet?” he asks.

  “What situation?” Vangelesti asks back. “You mean there’s more shit than this going—”

  Dr. Watkins cuts him off by pushing the button on his end.

  “Not related,” he says. “Perhaps your friend just chose to release herself to another healthcare provider—”

  “She didn’t,” Vangelesti says. “If you would just come look, or have somebody come look … run the blood through, see if it’s hers … ”

  “Your suspicions have been noted, Mr. Vangelesti.”

  “And that’s all? We’re just going to let her remain unaccounted for?”

  “This isn’t a day care.”

  “Oh yeah,” Vangelesti says, eyeing the childishly closed door, “almost forgot we’re all adults here.” With that he clicks off.

  BUT Dr. Watkins depresses a third button, so he can eavesdrop—Vangelesti talking to the secretary: “Is there a procedure for calling the police?” he asks, his voice distant. Dr. Watkins closes his eyes in pain from this—the police getting involved. But he doesn’t open his door, either.

  “WE’RE getting married in May,” Vangelesti tells the secretary, using a more confidential tone, trying to argue an answer out of her. “Wouldn’t you be worried if you couldn’t find your … whoever?”

  The secretary shakes her head, sighs defeat. “Security,” she answers. “It has to go through
them.”

  “I can’t just dial 911 for emergency?” Vangelesti asks, which confuses the secretary.

  “We’re who emergency calls,” she says. “And anyway, 911 calls from the hospital get a callback to Metatron, to verify.”

  “Then I’ll start there,” Vangelesti says, running his fingers along the inserted row of quick-dial buttons, finally landing on SECURITY.

  “Hello,” he says into the phone, Rush on the other end, trying like hell to match Vangelesti’s extension number to a joystick-key combo. Failing. Having to guess: “Vangelesti?” he says finally, only his side of the conversation available: “… yeah, well, Met’s stepped out … the PD? I don’t know [flipping through papers]. 911, right? There must be a code or protocol around here somewhere … ”

  He looks for it, trying to keep Metatron and Con on the individual monitor the whole time. Close-up, they’re just trolling for trouble.

  “How ’bout when I find it I just call them from here …?” he offers, then listens for a bit. “Nothing,” he says, “coma unit’s coma unit as far as we know here—” but then stops short, the coma patient crawling into view for a moment, across a ceiling, the old man in the wheelchair a body length below.

  “Holy holy shit209 … ” he whispers, leaning forward, dropping the phone, Vangelesti forgotten, his small voice ad-libbing for a reply that’s not coming.

  Rush begins pawing through the clutter for the radio mic, finds it, his voice crackling out of the close-up of the radio clipped onto Metatron’s shoulder, Metatron snapping his head around to it.

  “Met?” Rush says, far, far o.s., half-frantic. “Metatron? Con? C’mon, come back,210 over … ”

  “Yes?” Metatron says, his head angled suspiciously down to his shoulder, Con shrugging as if this is all news to him.

  “4B west,” Rush says, then corrects: “No, no, east, I mean. 4B east. There.”

  “What?” Con says into Metatron’s shoulder.

  “Just go,” Rush says.

  “Am I going to regret this?” Metatron asks, lips curled with distrust. Aiming it all at Con, who backs off. Swallows and follows, waits for the polished chrome doors of the elevator to open, his and Metatron’s standing reflections being replaced by degrees, by an open hall, dead-ending at a ceiling-mounted sign: 4A/4B, with its respective arrows. Con’s POV lingers close-up on the sign, as if he could just as easily go 4A—west, left. Which is the other, safe way. His body language is all about reluctance, foreknowledge, suspicions.